TL;DR: Amazon’s PR/FAQ method: write the press release and FAQ before building. Forces clarity on customer value upfront. Most PR/FAQs never ship—“a feature, not a bug.” Kindle came from this.
The process is counterintuitive. You draft a press release announcing your product as if it already shipped. What’s the headline? What problem does it solve? What’s the customer benefit, not the feature list? Then write the FAQ: what are people’s objections, questions, concerns? You answer them before they’re asked.
This reveals the gap between your idea and a real product. If you can’t write a compelling press release, your idea isn’t ready. If the FAQ is full of hand-waving, the product won’t be either (working-backwards-method).
Amazon’s insight: most PR/FAQs never become real products. That’s intentional. This is a thinking tool, not a commitment tool. The goal is to kill bad ideas cheaply. If the written version doesn’t excite you, the built version won’t excite customers. You save months of engineering by learning this upfront. Kindle started from a PR/FAQ. So did AWS. So did almost everything Amazon ships (working-backwards).
The output: clarity before code.